CATHOLIC DOCTRINE MISREPRESENTED.

Letters addressed to The Rev. William Hawley.

[The following Series of Letters, occasioned by a violent attack upon the members of the Catholic Church, made in the columns of a periodical published in Washington, and conducted by several clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church, appeared in the United States Catholic Miscellany, for 1824-5, and were afterwards published in a pamphlet form.]

LETTER I.

CHARLESTON, S. C., Dec. 4, 1824. To the Rev. William Hawley and his associates, Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States.

Sirs-In your Theological Repertory for November, 1824, is an article headed "Roman Catholic Doctrines." After a most patient reperusal of this piece I find it to be a gross misrepresentation of Roman Catholics, conveyed to your readers in unbecoming language, and a most unfounded calumny of my persecuted fellow-countrymen wantonly introduced, together with some historical blunders.

Were this the first time that you exhibited your zeal to attack an unoffending church, and a meritorious people, I should have perhaps been satisfied to warn you of your errors in the hope that your zeal and your ignorance might plead your excuse. But the result of your late efforts being your total discomfiture, your zeal should have given way to prudence, and you ought to have studied to learn whether your statements were correct before you ventured to appear before a discerning public. Sirs, I shall prove those statements to be totally devoid of truth, and you then will be left to choose between want of information and want of honesty. In either case you will be proved unqualified for editors of a religious publication.

I stated, sirs, that you attacked an unoffending church. I now ask you, what offence has the Roman Catholic Church of this Union given to you? What offence has the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, given to the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States?

Do you answer, sirs, for I am at a loss to know what answers you can give. Will you have recourse to the old differences at the other side of the Atlantic? Sirs, your church is not there to be found. There is a church like yours it is true. But, sirs, no theologian who had any respect for his character, would assert that and yours to be the same church, however similar they may be. However, this is not now matter for our inquiry. But suppose the Church of England and yours to be what they are not, the same; when, where, or how have the Roman Catholics of the United States offended your church in Europe? What is the pretext, then, of your attack? You may, sirs, recollect the fable of the lamb drinking at the stream, and asked by a wolf who drank at the same rivulet, though much higher up, why he made the water so muddy as to render it unfit for the majesty of the wolf; "Do you not perceive that the water cannot flow up the stream?" replied the lamb. "Perhaps so," rejoined the wolf, "but twelve months ago you made it muddy in another place." "Indeed," replied the lamb, "I was not born then." "But your father was," said the wolf, "and I will make you suffer." Thank God, however, the Constitution of the United States will not give Messrs. Hawley & Company all the power which they would be disposed to exercise to our injury.

Will you, sirs, point out any persecution of the English Church by Roman Catholics of America? You know, sirs, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, about which you have written so much falsehood in so few lines, was not committed by American Catholics nor upon Protestant Episcopalians. Sirs, in this happy country, Protestants and Catholics are united in bonds of amity, their intercourse is unrestrictedly affectionate. I, therefore, am totally at a loss for any reason why you and writers of your description, should be so anxious and so unremitting in their endeavours to interrupt this harmony, to create jealousy, to produce in America the miseries of European dissensions. The Roman Catholic Church of America has too long permitted herself to be assailed with impunity by every essayist in an unmeaning religious cant; it is time to exhibit their deformity. You must show, not by declamation, but by facts, in what your church has been offended by ours in these United States, or you stand convicted of having attacked an unoffending church.

You have, sirs, charged a meritorious people with crimes of which they are not guilty. You have accused the hereditary Earl Marshal of England, the premier peer of the realm, the Duke of Norfolk, of being in principle a traitor to his government, although that government, with the exception of about ten bigots in the House of Lords, has in the

last session of Parliament, directly contradicted you. What is his crime? He refuses to swear that the King of England is the supreme head of his church? Is this a crime? Will you swear that he is the head of your church? Will Bishop White swear that the King of England is the supreme head of your church? Is Bishop White a traitor? Can the venerable eldest prelate of your church be in principle a faithful citizen of this country, though he should refuse to swear that the King of England is the supreme head of his church? But, sirs, that Bishop did once swear that the King of England was the head of his church, and he afterwards rejected that headship; yet will you dare to call him a traitor? Why, then, call men traitors who never believed, never professed, never swore to any such headship; whose ancestors were plundered of their property, many of them dragged out their lives in prisons, several of whom were put to death because they would not swear what they did not believe to be true. Though you should even look upon those men to have erred in faith because they did not swear that the King of England was the visible head of God's church, yet you must allow them the merit of having suffered for conscience sake. Yet, sirs, in the plenitude of your liberality, and with singular consistency, you who do not acknowledge it to be necessary for salvation, to swear the oath of supremacy, tell us that the British and Irish Catholics who refuse to swear it ought to be persecuted, that they are on a level with the wretched criminals who are sent to New Holland. What has the Duke of Norfolk done, what has the Earl of Shrewsbury done, what have the millions of Catholics whose grievances resound through Europe done to provoke your ire, that you, claiming to be American citizens, should thus sentence them to transportation because they follow the conviction of their consciences?

Look at your words: when you can produce no charge against the Roman Catholics of the United States, you arraign the Catholics of Great Britain. These are your expressions:

"Such are the doctrines of a church, the members of which have raised such an outcry against the intolerant spirit of the English government for not receiving them to a full share in its administration. They might as well accuse that government of cruelty, for banishing the wretched criminals to New Holland; or of illiberality, for punishing the man who traitorously conspires against his country.'

And is this the language of American citizens? Is this the liberality of an Association of Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States? I solemnly assure you that such a possibility could not be conceived in Europe; and what is the crime of those traitors who are placed on a level with the wretched criminals who are banished to New Holland? They will not swear that the King of England is the

visible head in earth of God's Church!!! This is the head and front of their offence.

Will the Quaker swear it? Will the Presbyterian swear it? Will the Congregationalist swear it? Will the Unitarian swear it? Will the Baptist swear it? Will Mr. Hawley swear it? Will any Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church now swear it? And are all those traitors to be now sent as wretched criminals to New Holland? And their banishment will not be an act even of illiberality!!

No! Mr. Hawley and his associates will not banish those good men; none deserve banishment as wretched criminals and traitors, but those Irish papists. Is this the language of gentlemen? No, sirs, it is not. Is this the language of scholars? Is it the language of Christians? No, sirs; but I shall leave to the people of America to designate your characteristic.

What is the head and front of the charge? No oath can bind Irish papists to heretics. What is the proof? I shall examine first the probability of your charge in the special case which you adduce. I shall then give you the facts; I shall then take up your general principle and your semblances of authority. But, sirs, I shall not conclude in this nor in my next letter.

What are the facts of your special case? The English government tells its Catholic subjects, "you must be disfranchised until you swear that you believe the King of England is head of the church, and that no foreign prelate has or ought to have any spiritual or ecclesiastical authority in this realm." The Catholic answers, "I do not believe either of the propositions to be true." The government answers, "I do not care what you believe, I only want you to swear." To show that I state the case fairly, I could produce several instances of well-known persons who did not believe the truth of the doctrines required to be sworn to, but who, pressed by the danger of losing their property and their rights, did in a moment of temptation go into the Protestant Churches and read the forms, and into courts and take the oaths, and publicly declare, as soon as they received their certificates from the minister and the clerk of the crown, that they did not believe, but merely went through the form to comply with the law and to save themselves from ruin; and yet they were ever after considered good and lawful Protestants. Those disgusting recitals are painful to me: but, sirs, you have wantonly, I was about to add another expression, provoked them, and I suppress much which I would wish to forget. I was right, then, when I stated the answer of the British government to be, "We care not for your belief, we only want you to swear. The Catholics who continued faith

ful, that is the Irish papists, said, "We will not swear what we do not believe," and their property was swallowed up by the men who swore. Yet Mr. Hawley and his associates are kind enough to say those men had no regard for their oaths!!! Yes, the men who gave up their estates, their liberties, their homes, many of them their lives, and who could at once emancipate themselves by merely taking an oath which Mr. Hawley proclaims they do not consider binding, but which is all that the British government requires!!! Did I take that oath, I would have avoided many of the ills of life. Did my ancestors take it, my lot would not have been poverty and the contemptuous oppression of the plunderer of my patrimony, who, to gain what I lost, swore what, perhaps, he did not believe. But my conscience has no sting, and in this free country I may meet Mr. Hawley and his associates as they de

serve.

In the name of common justice, in the name of common sense, I ask, is it probable? Is it possible that those men who, sooner than swear one false oath to Protestants, permitted those same Protestants to run riot with their estates, their liberties and their lives, and those of their descendants did not believe an oath to heretics was binding, or ought to be observed?

Why were the Catholic Bishops turned out of their sees by Queen Elizabeth? because they would not swear what they did not believe. Why was Bishop Fisher beheaded? Because he would not swear that oath. Why was Archbishop Plunkett hanged, drawn, and quartered? Because he would not take that oath. Sirs, I will not increase the disgusting catalogue which I could swell to thousands, in whose blood the contradictions to your libels might be written. You must be either totally uninformed as to the proceedings in Great Britain, during the last eight or ten years, or you must be the most careless of reputation or credit of any public writers that ever ventured to brave an enlightened public. The greatest bigot on the benches of the House of Peers, the most infatuated old simpleton who peruses Fox's Martyrology, the most unblushing declaimer against Popery, the most degraded hawker of a paragraph for an Orange publication in the British islands, would feel himself overwhelmed with shame and confusion, did he venture to express, within the last few years, so gross a falsehood; though it was, for party purposes, imposed as unquestioned truth upon the people of Great Britain, for upwards of two centuries before. This atrocious calumny, like the depositions of the Rev. Titus Oates, has long since been treated with its well-merited reprobation in the British Parliament. Lord Stafford has been replaced in his rank, and, notwithstanding the